German Patent Application No. DE 102 004 042 467 A1 describes a method and a device for generating a deployment signal for a pedestrian protection device. In this method, a deployment check and a plausibility check of the sensor data are performed, an extraction of features and/or an offset recognition being performed in the deployment check to recognize a pedestrian using the sensor data, thus determining a point of impact of the object, the deployment signal for the pedestrian protection device being generated when a collision with a pedestrian is recognized in the deployment check and the plausibility check of the sensor data is positive.